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Background

The music genre ‘Jungle’ emerged in the 1990s and is viewed as the direct originating point for the newer music genre named ‘Drum & Bass’ (emerged mid 1990s). These two genres are commonly used as synonyms for one another. Almost 30 years have passed since these genres were developed. During this time the Drum & Bass genre has grown significantly in terms of exposure and now knows many subgenres, while Jungle music did not make the same growth and lost popularity. What caused this turn of events? Has Drum & Bass become more popular because of its diversity? Can we still use the terms ‘Jungle’ and ‘Drum & Bass’ as synonyms or has Drum & Bass developed in such a way that it has become completely different from its originating point? This corpus analysis attempts to answer these questions by comparing Jungle music to various subgenres of Drum & Bass music:

Corpus

This corpus uses genre-based Spotify Playlists.

First, we investigate how much vocals are used in each genre

Instrumentalness predicts whether a track contains vocals or not. A value of 0.5 or higher represents a track that contains no vocal content. In this plot, the thickness of the line represents the amount of tracks that have the same instrumentalness value. This plot shows a pattern between the genres that was expected. The genres Jungle and RaggaDnB are very similar and both contain mostly vocal tracks since most tracks have an instrumentalness value between 0 and 0.25.

LightDnB and HeavyDnB also show a somewhat similar distribution. The differences between these genres is that HeavyDnB contains mostly non-vocal tracks, where LightDnB shows an almost equal amount of vocal and non-vocal tracks.

Second, Is it possible that the presence of vocals influences other features?

Energy

The energy value ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. A higher value means that the track feels fast, loud and noisy.

It becomes clear that the genre HeavyDnB consists mostly of tracks with very high energy. This was expected since this genre draws influence from hardcore music, for example. The genres Jungle and RaggaDnB also show many tracks with high energy, possibly because there always is a consistent drum pattern in addition to vocals. LightDnB tracks show more variety in the amount of energy. This is not surprising as this genre is usually has a ‘laid-back’ feel to it.

Valence

Valence describes how positive a track feels. A high valence corresponds to a more happy or euphoric track. Tracks with low valence sound more sad, depressed or angry.

As for valence, the genres can be divided into two groups. HeavyDnB and LightDnB show a tendency for tracks with low valence, whereas Jungle and RaggaDnB consist of tracks with a general high valence. In the first plot we could see the same split between these genres. Is it possible that the presence of vocals influences this other features?

Note: it is surprising that LightDnB has many tracks with low valence. A general high valence was expected here, since this genre is considered as the more ‘feel-good’ subgenre of Drum & Bass.

Danceability

Danceability describes how suitable a track is for dancing. In this plot, a light color represents a high danceability and a dark color represents low danceability.

The genres can be divided in the same manner as with valence. Jungle and RaggaDnB have more tracks than HeavyDnB and LightDnB that are considered ‘danceable’ by Spotify.

Now why is that? The biggest difference measured between the genres is that Jungle and RaggaDnB often have vocals in tracks, whereas HeavyDnB and Light DnB have more non-vocal tracks. It is possible that there is a relationship between the presence of vocals and the features described here. Possibly, the presence of vocals positively influences valence and/or danceability.

Chromagram Comparison 1 - What does the general build up of a Light Drum & Bass track look like?

Track: Falls to you VIP - Calibre

Chromagram

This track was chosen because it shows some aspects that usually are present in Light Drum & Bass tracks. The intro of the song lasts from the beginning until the first drop. What stands out here is that the intro is relatively long, it lasts approximately 90 seconds. Light Drum & Bass tracks usually have a longer intro than other genres because the average build up is very slow.

The middle part of the song starts after the first drop. This is usually the part where a consistent ‘Drum & Bass’ drum pattern is played until the breakdown. A number of samples are then layered on top of each other. This creates the unique sound of the song. The samples used in this genre contains a lot of harmonic and melodic grooves, which makes this genre very pleasant to listen to. This pattern of a drop followed by a breakdown is then repeated one more time. There could be small variations of the samples used, but in general, this second part sounds the same as the first.

After the second breakdown, one final chord is played to indicate that the song has come to an end. This is the typical way a Light Drum & Bass track ends.

Keygram

In the keygram we can see that the intro is in the key of Dmaj or Dmin. Usually the key is consistent in a Drum & Bass track, but the program finds it very hard to determine the key in the middle sections. It is possible that the many harmonies layered on top of each other make it very hard to determine one specific key. Additionally, this music is made with exclusively electronically generated sounds and Spotify might have trouble analyzing this when compared to actual chords played by a guitar.

Chromagram Comparison 2 - And for Heavy Drum & Bass? Comparing a chromagram to a chordogram

Track: Faceless - Phace, Was A Be

Chromagram

The intro of this song shows how a typical Heavy Drum & Bass track starts. The drops are usually more intense. This means that the build up to the drop starts early in the song. You can see this in the first part of the chromagram. The notes that are played (yellow) seem to have a staircase-like form. Playing a higher note each time will make the listener anticipate more and more to the drop.

The middle part of tracks are unique in the sense that the underlying ‘Drum & Bass’ drum pattern becomes harder to recognize. Lots of deep basslines and samples with heavy electronic melodies are used in this part. Also, vocals are not used. This is why the chromagram looks so consistent. Nothing interesting happens after the first breakdown. Just a few tones are played, and after a while a similar build up as before the first drop is used to anticipate towards the second drop.

The ending of the track starts after the second breakdown. Sometimes a Heavy Drum & Bass track ends instantly after the second breakdown. But in this case, a final sample (which still sounds pretty restless) is introduced prior to the breakdown. At some point the main samples stop, and the final sample is played for a short time before ending.

Chordogram

For reference, the white vertical lines are also placed in the chordogram. During the buildup towards the first drop, the chordogram is quite messy. You can see that something else is going on, but it is hard to determine what is happening. We can see that in general, the chords used in the track stay consistent, even during the intro (this is not visible in the chromagram).

Chromagram Comparison 3 - Now, what is different in the build up of a typical Jungle song?

Track: Good Enough - Serial Killaz

This track would be the average ‘Jungle’ track. A ‘Drum & Bass’ drum pattern starts a few seconds after the track begins. This is played until the first drop.

In this genre, drops are usually introduced by vocals. The vocal part begins, and a bassline is added so that the track sounds more ‘complete’. The chromagram’s pattern of the middle parts of this track seem different when compared to the other tracks discussed, because vocals are included here. The vocals and the samples have their own sound, this is why multiple notes show a high magnitude (yellow).

It is common for Jungle tracks to end the song by using the same samples as in the intro of the track.

Track Breakdown - Self-Similarity Matrices of a Ragga Drum & Bass track

A track from the Ragga Drum & Bass genre is chosen for the comparison of pitch-based and timbre-based features because tracks from this genre have not been discussed yet.

Track: No Diggity - Kursiva, Mooncat, Earth Beat Movement

Interestingly, there are only small differences between the two self-similarity matrices. This track’s overall structure is very similar to the structure of tracks that we have discussed. The intro is visible in the lower left corner. Usually, there are diagonal lines in the chroma-based matrix when there is repetition in a track, for example when a chorus is played multiple times. This is not the case for Drum & Bass tracks. The repetition takes on a different form, and therefore there are almost no diagonal lines present in the matrix.

Small changes in texture can be seen in the timbre-based matrix, especially at approximately 190 seconds. This section of the track is after a breakdown and is therefore very quiet. Suddenly, a short and loud electronic melody is played, which causes the change of color in the timbre-based matrix. This is not a change in pitch and therefore the differences are not visible in the pitch-based matrix.

The overall average tempo of Jungle and Drum & Bass music

Track: Turn Down the Lights - Benny Page

The tempogram of this track represents the average tempo of the majority of Jungle and Drum & Bass tracks. We can see three lines in the tempogram at equal distance from each other, where the middle line is the thick yellow line at around 350 BPM. The actual tempo of the track is represented by the lowest line, which is around 170 BPM. This shows that Jungle as well as Drum & Bass tracks have a very high tempo compared to other music genres.

(Note: the idea was to show a tempogram for the average track of each genre, but unfortunately this takes a considerable amount of time to load. Also, after viewing the tempograms individually, the averages are so close together that the tempograms do not differ that much. Therefore only one tempogram was chosen to represent the tempo of the corpus.)

Which features are most important in distinguishing the genres?

Mosaic plot

It is interesting to investigate if an algorithm would classify each track and predict in which of the four Drum & Bass playlists the track belongs. If the algorithm is mainly correct, it means that the playlists significantly differ from each other. For the computer to be able to handle the computation, only the top 25 tracks of each playlist were compared to each other. On the other hand, including more tracks would increase content validity, but I believe that a quarter of each playlist is sufficient to gain significant results.

The results of the algorithm are presented in the plot on the left. The length of a ‘block’ shows the amount of tracks which the algorithm thinks it belongs to the genre. If the genre of the largest block matches the genre of the ‘truth’ on the bottom, the algorithm did well in predicting the genre. We can see that the algorithm did moderately well for HeavyDnB. Around 50% of the tracks were correctly predicted as HeavyDnB. The algorithm performed the best for LightDnB. The overwhelming majority of LightDnB tracks was identified as a LightDnB track.

The algorithm was not able to distinguish Jungle from RaggaDnB. We can see for both genres that there is an almost even divide. So apparently, Jungle and RaggaDnB do not differ that much from each other.

Main feature differences

So, how can this be explained? In the right plot, we look at the three most important features with which the algorithm determined in which genre the tracks belong. First, we can see clearly that LightDnB separates itself with Timbre Component 8 (around the value 0). It’s great that there is such a clear divide, but unfortunately we will never know what Timbre Component 8 exactly entails. The three remaining genres all mainly have a Timbre Component 8 of zero or higher.

Next, HeavyDnB is separated by instrumentalness and valence. HeavyDnB tracks are mostly placed at the left of the plot, which indicates a general low valence. Additionally, where Jungle and RaggaDnB have low instrumentalness (smaller dots), HeavyDnB is very instrumental (bigger dots).

Lastly, it becomes evident from this plot that Jungle and RaggaDnB cannot be distinguished from each other by the most important features. When looking at the plot, you can see that LightDnB and HeavyDnB seem to have their own space, but it is very hard to say the same for Jungle and RaggaDnB since there is significant overlap between the two.

Final thoughts

When starting this course, I didn’t really know what to expect. After learning how much interesting information can be gathered from the Spotify API, I became very motivated in learning how to analyse the music. Besides the interest in analysing music, I’ve learned a lot in terms of coding. I had a lot of fun doing the assignments because you are able to choose what you want to analyse.

Results

I wanted to investigate the differences between Jungle and Drum & Bass music. These are the main findings of the analyses:

Based on these findings, we can answer the question that was asked at the beginning of this course: can the genres Jungle and Drum & Bass still be called synonyms? Over the years, the genres have grown further apart from each other. The subgenre RaggaDnB is still very similar to Jungle, therefore those terms could be used as synonyms. But overall, Jungle and Drum & Bass have become very different genres.

Limitations